Elite Dangerous: Horizons |OT| Just scratching the surface

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You filthy instant gratification kiddy, you! Go, play CoD or something that suits your attention span, so you can vent off your ADHD! Leave the elaborate complex games to adults.

I really cannot possibly relate to your misgivings of the immersion arseholes.

Quite the clever workaround for experiencing the competent aspects of game design. Still, could be better in two ways: The first step is to not log back in. The second step is to not log in in the first place.

I thought I'd equip and engineer an FDL to go bug hunting but after spending a few hours getting the power plant and FSD ready and still having to go and get thrusters, shields, shield boosters and life support modded I gave up and did exactly that. Guess I could just retrofit my Corvette with the new weapons but it's nowhere near as fun as the FDL.

Exploration codex sounds like a neat idea, will need to see more about it to see if it actually improves exploration gameplay at all.

Exploration missions were briefly mentioned, looking forward to hearing more about how they work.

Engineer mods now guaranteed to progress, no more loser rolls. Super great improvement, hope this comes very soon!

Free for all Horizons players? That's very surprising, and if they do all of this I'll buy a flurry of store DLC just to support their efforts, to hell with free I don't mind paying for good work.

CONS:

I would have liked to hear more about improved Exploration tools, they were sadly very vague on this.

All the new ships seem to be combat vessels, we already have many combat vessels, we need more ships for other aspects.

No info on the Panther Clipper or a medium sized Imperial Explorer.

No Orrery Map shown.

No details on the monetization of the game post season model. Are they just expecting store vanity purchases to pay for the game? Maybe the store makes more money than I think it does?

The anti-beigefication patch isn't going live today. So sad.

Overall it was a better Expo for Elite than I expected, I am impressed. However, I sincerely hope that they have MUCH more planned for exploration, I really wanted to hear a lot more detail on that. New content for exploration is a great thing, but what we DESPERATELY NEED more than ANYTHING ELSE for exploration are improved tools to actually find content. Heatmaps and tools to search planet surfaces for example. I sincerely hope Frontier understands that, but I'm terribly worried that the art and asset department will make all sorts of nice new things for explorers to find but we'll still end up using our eyeballs to look for the new needles in the millions of haystacks. That would be a terrible travesty.

Still, a rather positive Expo if you ask me. It's more promising than I expected it to be, but I still want so much more information. At least I'm super hopeful for 2018 though.

Really, we don't. ;-) Not unless they expand the basic underlying mechanics beyond the breaindead current "hold a trigger for fifteen seconds and repeat that for three hours on end while watching netflix, as not to let your brain die of under-use" mechanic or "carry stuff from A to B´, while hitting the 'Jump' button a lot and watching three dozen instance transiitons". Any old bloody ship will do that. :'D

Edit: T10... Looks like two T9's glued together. Not that this isn't a plausible engineering path in vehicle development. And it's one of the very few non-phallus shaped ships to boot. Chieftain looks awsome, whatever it's supposed to be.

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Really, we don't. ;-) Not unless they expand the basic underlying mechanics beyond the breaindead current "hold a trigger for fifteen seconds and repeat that for three hours on end while watching netflix, as not to let your brain die of under-use" mechanic or "carry stuff from A to B´, while hitting hte 'Jump' button a lot and watching three dozen instance transiitons". Any old bloody ship will do that. :'D

Edit: T10... Looks like two T9's glued together. Not that this isn't a plausible engineering path in vehicle development. And it's one of the very few non-phallus shaped ships to boot. Chieftain looks awsome, whatever it's supposed to be.

Exploration codex sounds like a neat idea, will need to see more about it to see if it actually improves exploration gameplay at all.

Exploration missions were briefly mentioned, looking forward to hearing more about how they work.

Engineer mods now guaranteed to progress, no more loser rolls. Super great improvement, hope this comes very soon!

Free for all Horizons players? That's very surprising, and if they do all of this I'll buy a flurry of store DLC just to support their efforts, to hell with free I don't mind paying for good work.

CONS:

I would have liked to hear more about improved Exploration tools, they were sadly very vague on this.

All the new ships seem to be combat vessels, we already have many combat vessels, we need more ships for other aspects.

No info on the Panther Clipper or a medium sized Imperial Explorer.

No Orrery Map shown.

No details on the monetization of the game post season model. Are they just expecting store vanity purchases to pay for the game? Maybe the store makes more money than I think it does?

The anti-beigefication patch isn't going live today. So sad.

Overall it was a better Expo for Elite than I expected, I am impressed. However, I sincerely hope that they have MUCH more planned for exploration, I really wanted to hear a lot more detail on that. New content for exploration is a great thing, but what we DESPERATELY NEED more than ANYTHING ELSE for exploration are improved tools to actually find content. Heatmaps and tools to search planet surfaces for example. I sincerely hope Frontier understands that, but I'm terribly worried that the art and asset department will make all sorts of nice new things for explorers to find but we'll still end up using our eyeballs to look for the new needles in the millions of haystacks. That would be a terrible travesty.

Still, a rather positive Expo if you ask me. It's more promising than I expected it to be, but I still want so much more information. At least I'm super hopeful for 2018 though.

Member

Great summary Mengy. Thanks for that.
Some good features coming and like you said if it's free for Horizons owners I will be buying more cosmetics to support the team.
Really like the look of The Chieftain. Hopefully it will have descent stats. Looking to move off my Anaconda.

wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel

In my opinion this is a good thing as the game just isn't ready yet for atmo landings nor space legs. Elite's foundation is still too barebones, and adding big new features like that would only result in empty gameplay like we have now with so much of the game. Frontier has FINALLY realized that they need to bolster the game's core foundations before building any more houses upon it. And with a more robust planet surface generator, improved lighting system, better exploration and searching tools, improved trading, better core mechanics in general, better multiplayer tools and features, and a much better way to communicate narratives and things to the players, THEN the game will at last be ready to take it's next steps towards better features. THEN atmo landings can happen as we'll have the game engine and play mechanics to actually make them interesting. THEN we can have Elite Feet as there will actually be reasons and things to do while walking around.

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In my opinion this is a good thing as the game just isn't ready yet for atmo landings nor space legs. Elite's foundation is still too barebones, and adding big new features like that would only result in empty gameplay like we have now with so much of the game. Frontier has FINALLY realized that they need to bolster the game's core foundations before building any more houses upon it. And with a more robust planet surface generator, improved lighting system, better exploration and searching tools, improved trading, better core mechanics in general, better multiplayer tools and features, and a much better way to communicate narratives and things to the players, THEN the game will at last be ready to take it's next steps towards better features. THEN atmo landings can happen as we'll have the game engine and play mechanics to actually make them interesting. THEN we can have Elite Feet as there will actually be reasons and things to do while walking around.

We're coming up on three years (four if you count the pre-release period, which I don't). As for it being too late, its a game in on-going development, it is literally never too late as long as the developers are working on the game and players are playing the game. Frontier appears to be taking a year from adding any major (as in game changing) features in order to address most of user's complaints and problems with the game. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Atmospheric planet landings or space legs in 2019 or at the very least the ability to fly into gas giants.

Member

In my opinion this is a good thing as the game just isn't ready yet for atmo landings nor space legs. Elite's foundation is still too barebones, and adding big new features like that would only result in empty gameplay like we have now with so much of the game. Frontier has FINALLY realized that they need to bolster the game's core foundations before building any more houses upon it. And with a more robust planet surface generator, improved lighting system, better exploration and searching tools, improved trading, better core mechanics in general, better multiplayer tools and features, and a much better way to communicate narratives and things to the players, THEN the game will at last be ready to take it's next steps towards better features. THEN atmo landings can happen as we'll have the game engine and play mechanics to actually make them interesting. THEN we can have Elite Feet as there will actually be reasons and things to do while walking around.

Agree, as much as I want the experience of landing on atmospherics planets, that's an empty novelty without an actual gameplay that takes advantage of said novelty. Otherwise 20 minutes later we would have people asking "it's nice, now what do we do?"

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We're coming up on three years (four if you count the pre-release period, which I don't). As for it being too late, its a game in on-going development, it is literally never too late as long as the developers are working on the game and players are playing the game. Frontier appears to be taking a year from adding any major (as in game changing) features in order to address most of user's complaints and problems with the game. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Atmospheric planet landings or space legs in 2019 or at the very least the ability to fly into gas giants.

Agree, as much as I want the experience of landing on atmospherics planets, that's an empty novelty without an actual gameplay that takes advantage of said novelty. Otherwise 20 minutes later we would have people asking "it's nice, now what do we do?"

Maybe the difference is the transparency or ability to brute force through pure funding/size of staff. I have faith in RSI to actually make something eventually, not so much for FD.

At FX17 Sandro was talking about the "great game they have the luxury of doing another pass on." The perspective that this isn't an unfinished and unrealized game seems absolutely insane to me and does not make me hopeful for the game's future.

Spaceghost

Spacelegs fall similarly into that area of "this is nice but what's the point?" Like I guess you could argue that it makes it for a more immersive experience but unless you're willing to add settlements, cities and activities for you to do as your cmdr it's not worth it. Not to mention most of us bought this game because we wanted to fly space ship and dog fight lol.

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Spacelegs fall similarly into that area of "this is nice but what's the point?" Like I guess you could argue that it makes it for a more immersive experience but unless you're willing to add settlements, cities and activities for you to do as your cmdr it's not worth it. Not to mention most of us bought this game because we wanted to fly space ship and dog fight lol.

I think some vital parts of exploration require space legs, like the ability to EVA and explore derelict wrecks. Go down and explore that lost colony, get data, learn of what happened to these people. But that's a whole lot of work and they've got to develop things like Powerplay. I will never not be salty about that huge waste of time they spent. On the subject of wasting time I'm kinda shocked they didn't mention multi-crew getting any competent roles. That's just another 1 and done feature like CQC. Gross mismanagement of time that company has.

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Watched the recording of the Elite talk during FX17 now. Overall, I'm positive on the changes, but as the Horizon season has shown: The devil's in the detail. Take the strictly progressive improving engineer upgrades. In essence, that sounds like a great way to reduce time wasted on RNG gambling. But it's so vague and leaves so much room for interpretation, that the actual implementation may turn out to be poor. Just like multicrew was about my most anticipated PvE feature of Horizons. And turned out to be a right turd, not only because the mechanic itself was so limited and tacked on, but also because of the pretentious no-fun-allowed payout gimpings.

I've got a a couple of main concerns:

Will they be able to stick to the roadmap this time? While all updates sound great in general, they aren't exactly as groundbreaking as to fill two years. We've had that with Horizons. They seemingly aren't monetizing the updates either (I'm expecting a hole lot of new buyable cosmetics instead).

And while very vague, Sandro's comments on expanding mining sound like the basic activity will receive quite a bit of added depth (if the changes turn out to be competent: very much *YAY!*). In contrast to that, they've mostly mentioned new "anomalies" for exploration as far as I understood? That is, in terms of new content, not much needed fixes like the de-beigfication and planetary surfaces hopefully looking less like a HD-yfied mid 90's voxel based terrain generation game (height maps mountains without cliffs or overhangs, no surface details beyond the completely out-of-place rocks everywhere). While more 3D assets to find are definitely great, unless the basic exploration mechanics are overhauled, it'll all come down to holding a trigger for 15 seconds to scan a thing and having no other meaningful interaction for explorers. Even the much needed ingame encyclopedia isn't going to change much about that unless exploration becomes a less braindead ingame activity than it is now at the level of its basic game mechanics. I'm talking about something like differentiated scanning mechanics, which reward skill and provide more meaningful info that can guide explorers, e.g. to surface POIs or interesting systems.

Wing missions. If they re as tacked on as PvE activity as multicrew is and as poorly integrated into the rest of the game (not even SRV control during multicrew...), for all I personally care, they don't even need to bother. Wings support should be an absolutely basic feature that pervades the whole game. Not something only isolated spawned missions offer you won't see half of the time, because they're RNG-spawned, but you still spend half an hour watching the braindead instance transitions with friends, just so got to the station where there's a chance of these missions even spawning. Horror scenario: We learn that Wing missions are introduced and spawn in systems with state X. We gather friends, spend an hour searching systems in state X, driving there, landing on stations, refreshing all mission boards and hopping through all modes, only to find that the missions didn't spawn any longer, because the system's state was just about to switch again. An evening wasted, no fun had, many loading screens watched, never logged back in.

Edit: Forgot to mention it... With things like guilds, I'm just waiting for the screaming immersionist brigade to shout Frontier into submission. Carrier ships that might maybe, potentially let people spawn somewhere with friends without watching an hour of braindead instance transitions? WE WON'T HAVE IT! Make it a bloody zero sum because "mah immershun", "mah balancing" and "that's not in the nature of Elite *whine* *growl*"!

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I'd like to say yes - after all there's a minor faction for Neogaf too. Realistically though, I'll be part of none of it, due to lack of enough spare time. Anyway, according to the Roadmap that's Q4 2018 material, isn't it? Plenty of time till then, even if Frontier doesn't have to stretch the "Beyond" season over two years this time.

It's really comfortable! And a happy 'accident'. The idea to combine the two mounts with a cross beam led to the beam being in the way of the keyboard, but offered the opportunity for an angled holder.

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I'd like to say yes - after all there's a minor faction for Neogaf too. Realistically though, I'll be part of none of it, due to lack of enough spare time. Anyway, according to the Roadmap that's Q4 2018 material, isn't it? Plenty of time till then, even if Frontier doesn't have to stretch the "Beyond" season over two years this time.

It's really comfortable! And a happy 'accident'. The idea to combine the two mounts with a cross beam led to the beam being in the way of the keyboard, but offered the opportunity for an angled holder.

Member

I don't know how you deep explorers do it. I think I've gone to Formidine and Hawkins Gap during the wild goose chases from the Rift thread and even those got to me. It's traveling back that does me in. I'm too impatient for it. The new route plotting is gonna be real nice for you though.

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Neo Galactic Adventure Force - NeoGAF. The home system is Apam Napat. But I believe they've been pushed into near meaningless and don't spawn many missions at all?

Still, the system is a nice sight and worth a visit.

Edit: Btw. I really love the work of Frontier's sound and visual teams. Just looking at the Jurassic World evolution trailer (it's really less of a trailer and more their animation team showing off dino pr0n) makes me wish they already had atmospheric landings on earth like planets and things like big game hunting as D.Braben mentioned around the 2014 Elite vanilla releaseKickstarter campaign.

And I really, really hope Elite is successful enough for them to sustain the rpoject and team until they get to eventually realize this vision.

Granted, I have nearly no hope that the game design won't infuriate me, but still, for the first couple of dozen to hundred of hours, I'd just enjoy in the sights and sounds. Until the eventual realization kicks in that the space T-rex big game hunting is an RNGenerated mess, where people spend two hours re-instancing the game, just so they get the specific specimen to spawn that their mission giver asks for.

Per system, per station and per faction, a player should only ever get a single mission of one mission type. E.g. "massacre 100 enemy ships". As long as that mission is pending, no other mission of that type will be generated.

The missions must offer the player an opportunity to select a scaling factor. E.g.: "Bring us X tons of resource Y". The player should be able to select X from a range determined by the game and the payouts ought to scale accordingly. This removes the need to take a dozen of the same RNGenerated piecemeal missions and spend 15 minutes on mode hopping and mission board re-instantiating to even get them.

Junior Member

Yeah I think this is the first time Frontier has mentioned exploration updates since the original base game. As someone on a pure exploration path, there has been no reason for me to buy anything beyond the season 1 base game. And that has to compete with NMS and Space Engine -- games that off-the-bat offer more for explorers.

I wonder if exploration missions will be tied to a plot or something. Or if maybe you'll just be finding natural anomalies and things like that. Features to find on planets would be great -- as it would expand exploration and actually give you a reason to bother with those tiny rocky worlds and icy moons.

Per system, per station and per faction, a player should only ever get a single mission of one mission type. E.g. "massacre 100 enemy ships". As long as that mission is pending, no other mission of that type will be generated.

The missions must offer the player an opportunity to select a scaling factor. E.g.: "Bring us X tons of resource Y". The player should be able to select X from a range determined by the game and the payouts ought to scale accordingly. This removes the need to take a dozen of the same RNGenerated piecemeal missions and spend 15 minutes on mode hopping and mission board re-instantiating to even get them.

Nice post! Well thought-through and articulated. I can see that working.
Also seeing as it's per faction, it wouldn't stop role-players from "playing" certain factions against one another to their benefit. I.e. you could still take one massacre mission from each side, and go to war for both like a true mercenary >

One question: in your proposed system, would available missions depend on your current ship and all possible outfitting (cargo, cabins, etc.)? Or would they depend on the exact loadout you have at the time?

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Nice post!
...
One question: in your proposed system, would available missions depend on your current ship and all possible outfitting (cargo, cabins, etc.)? Or would they depend on the exact loadout you have at the time?

Thanks. Can't help from being a bit disappointed that it spawns no discussion whatsoever though...

Granted, I haven't nearly taken into account every single detail or even thought about it. That post is only a suggestion for the key points and all surrounding details are open for interpretation. In terms of taking the players current ship into account during mission generation however, I think it should roughly be handled as it is now - the ship isn't accounted for, but the generated mission is marked as not selectable if the current ship doesn't fulfill the mission's basic requirements. E.g. having a suitable cargo hold or a SRV on board.

The reason is that the missions offered by a system are a visible effect of the background sim and a characterization of the system, not the player's current ship. The player can switch their ships if they want to take on the missions offered by a system after all, but a high security system requiring mined resources shouldn't generate massacre mission, because the player's currently in a murder boat.

Unconfirmed Member

That makes sense. It would be an improvement solely for the fact that, if I see a tasty surface mission but I forgot to fit an SRV, I don't have to worry about it disappearing during a board "tick" while I pop into outfitting for 2 minutes.

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It probably doesn't get more durable/reliable and bullshit-free than the CH HOTAS (Fighterstick + Pro Throttle). The disadvantages are the somewhat outdated electronics, compared to more modern HOTAS and the comparatively high price, as you still need pedals for a full set of analogue axis.